AT&T announces record sales for Smartphones

AT&T announced today that it sold more than ten million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2012. This surpasses the previous record of 9.4 million set last year.

While AT&T didn't break down the sales figures Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO for AT&T commented,

"During the quarter, we averaged more than 110,000 smartphone sales a day as customers flocked to our leading portfolio of the latest Android, Apple and Windows devices."

de la Vega also commented yesterday at the AT&T Developer Summit at CES 2013 that AT&T sells more Windows Phones than any other carrier in the world. While Android and iPhone sales likely contributed heavily to the 10 million in sales, we suspect that AT&T's Windows Phone lineup wasn't sitting idly by on the sidelines and helped contribute to the record sales figures as well.

Not exactly, but close. Given that the Nokia and HTC devices didn't launch until mid November (and zilch from Samsung), it really only left about six weeks to sell the 3 WP8 devices( and perhaps some WP 7.5 devices). And given the supply shortages....While 'millions sold' for WP would be lovely, given those conditions, wishful thinking on that number is about right, at least for AT&T.

Worldwide, though, a few million perhaps. Again, these devices missed the entire month of October due to Microsoft not launching the OS sooner, so their Q4 numbers (as evidenced by HTC's Q4 2012 results) will be a little skimpy. Hopefully, Q1 2013 will look better for both HTC and Nokia.

BB10 is looking very awesome to me. What I'm doing is getting a BB10 Curve (which surfaced some weeks ago as shown in Crackberry.com) and a Lumia 920. One for communicating and social networking and the other for media and games respectively.

WinFan1,
I am exactly in the same boat as you. I think the main apps will support BB10 faster than WP, which is very sad. For WP, sales cant climb faster.....
PS: I will definitely buy a BB10.. though it will be more out of respect for a company that made me use smartphones......

This sounds really good, hopefully WP does well in the future. I'm still puzzled because I've been reading a lot if comments on Nokia going Android... A good portion of those comments say that they would switch to Android in a heart beat. Yet a few days ago, there were a lot of people saying that they didn't want anything to do with Google. Hmmm...

Nokia has no plan to go to Android unless they have no choice. Right now they control about 70% of WP sales. They only piece of the puzzle they are missing with WP is volume which is increasing daily. Going to Android means no control over the OS (see Samsung Tizen) and no additional guarantee of success.
If Nokia gets to 6 - 8 million Lumia devices a quarter they would be pretty happy. That alone would spell doom for RIM and HTC.

I speculate if tizen does well, Samsung will slowly wean off Android and Asian markets will do the same. Google will left to depend on Motorola. NOKIA and the other OEMs will do much better if MS eases a little on the OS, especially Nokia if the can put 100% in the camera department.

Elop: So, the way I think about it is, in the current war on ecosystems, we are fighting with Windows Phone. That’s what we’re doing. Now, what we’re always doing is asking, how does that evolve? What’s next? What role does HTML5 play? What role does Android or other things play in the future? We’re looking further into the future, but it terms of what we’re bringing to market, and what we’re immediately focused on, we’re focused on Windows Phone.”

The error appears to have arises due to a case of Chinese whispers, with Spanish newspaper El Pais incorrectly transcribing an interview with Stephen Elop, possibly to make their story more exciting, and then Gizmodo Spain and eventually Gizmodo.com reporting on it.

Gizmodo has since updated their story with Nokia’s correction, and notes that Nokia appears to be very happy with the performance of the Nokia Lumia 920, with Stephen Elop listing as one of his goals of 2013 to reach double digit market share again, saying:

Q. What then arises goals for 2013?

A. I can not give specific figures, but the first great object, without setting a date, is to reach a market share in double digits. Then, keep pushing and striking a balance with the other two major ecosystems, Apple and Android.

If Nokia manages that I guess I can tick of another prediction from my 2013 list

The reason is because a good chunk of WP fans are actually converted Symbian fans who are really following Nokia instead of Windows Phone (myself included). However the only thing I would never follow is if they go Android. I hate Google.

I don't hate Google and I've never said I hate Google. As an ex Android user, I can honestly say I was happy with it. The thing I hated the most was that everybody around me had/has an Android or an Apple product. I wanted something different from everyone else so I changed to WP. I've also noticed that a lot of people don't even use their phone to their full potential, the furthest I see them go is viewing YouTube or getting on their Facebook...

i am pretty confident that apple did not sell on an even level with android as a whole id say 5 million android 3 million iphones and 2 million windows phones. only because crapdroid just pushes garbage out like every 15 minutes.

I'd reverse that. iPhone is stronger than Android in the US and AT&T seems to always be the strongest iPhone sales amoung US carriers.
I'd bet 8 million out of the 10 million devices sold were just 3 devices: iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, and Nokia Lumia 920.

i agree but while they iphone 5 is a strong device and a real competitor android hits multiple price points and there are multiple high as well as low end androids to compete against. people have budgets and so they get whats available to them so i stick with my prediction.

Guys totally off topic...am new to using the wpcentral app...am unable to make a new post in the forums section...is it cause the forum topics can only be viewed in the app or is it cause am using the ad-supported version of the app and hence missing out on some features? Pls help...

Wrong - the press report included the fact that they also had the best ever quarter for iPhone and Android so the vast majority (more than 90%) are clearly Android and iPhone. Their previous best iPhone quarter was the December quarter last year where they sold 7.6 million iPhones, so this year we know iPhone was > 7.6 million.

Well one thing for sure the Lumia 900 was reduced quite a bit this time of year on ebay I haven't been able to find a lumia 920 for under $350 there, so I guess its a good sign that they aren't dying in popularity, but bad for me because I am not paying over $350. I may have to catch a Windows 8.5 refresh device if this continues. >_>

I still barely ever see a windows phone in the wild...like almost never. I pay attention to people pulling out their phones and continue seeing iPhone and galaxy S3's everywhere, neary a win phone in sight.

You got that right. But I managed to convince a co-worker to get a 920. He was a long time crapple user wanted an iPhone 5 but he didn't want to wait 3 weeks. So in the meantime he got the 920 and said he will never go back to an iPhone.